Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In one of my father’s love letters, he arrived drunk at Strone to visit my mother at Mardrumho Cottage; whether he was driving the launch or his car we will never know. But if you look at a map of the area, it is a much shorter journey by boat. I will include a letter here where my father admits to his own drunken condition.

My father’s letters are anarchic; he has no respect for script or English grammar. His writing is sometimes unreadable; he writes with his left hand. As previously mentioned, he was punished by his teachers with a rap across the knuckles for having such a ‘fiendish’ habit. The Devil himself was considered a southpaw, and he and other evil spirits were always conjured up by left-handed gestures. 

I even suspect he wrote some of the letters while sipping a glass of whiskey or two! My father’s letters also reflect his character. But, I will keep this brief. I include a letter here (incomplete) and let the letter speak for itself.  

Comment on my father’s letter of ‘repentance’

The first thing I should comment on is that this letter was quite readable. In other words, over the years, my father’s script seemed to vary between the ‘readable’ and ‘unreadable’. 

The last page of the letter, written in the autumn of 1941, seems to be missing. My parents had been married for about one year. They hadn’t lived together, because of my father’s naval duties during the war.

My father was working at the Liverpool docks in northern England. The letter is addressed to my mother at “Mardrumho, Slone, Argyllshire, Scotland.” My mother had recently moved into a rented cottage called “Mardrumho.”

Before this, she had stayed in lodgings at Woodbank, near Dunoon. Slone was perhaps a 30- to 45-minute car drive from Dunoon. My father had been stationed at Dunoon, where he worked on the ships “Young John” and “Girl Ethel”, but he was ordered to work in Liverpool for a period.